It can be disconcerting it can be when everything you disconcerting hear when everything you hear is echoed at is an echoed at interval an interval. Such was the trope of a major new work offered at the San Francisco Conservatory’s fifth BluePrint concert, Manly Romero’s Doppelgänger, a chamber concerto for two pairs of instruments gamely performed by Elizabeth Choi and Kevin Rogers on violins and Scott Macomber and Ari Micich on trumpets. Phrase after phrase begun by one soloist was repeated, only a few notes behind, by its like partner. Had this been the exclusive feature of the composition, it could well have been yet another set piece resting in the dustbin of “experimental” music that impresses briefly but is never heard again.
But, Romero, who was trained and mentored by such practical composers as David Conte, Michael Daugherty, and William Bolcom, knows well how to inject interest and variety into his music. Each of the two movements of the 27-minute concerto had audience-friendly features in the orchestra to offset the soloists’ doppelgänger barrages: a gorgeous diatonic melody in the opening movement, and Arabic-sounding phrases, with bongos, in the second movement. The result was a deservedly enthusiastic response from the audience at the Caroline H. Hume Concert Hall, as well as a testament to the Hoefer Prize process, which offers yearly commissions to former graduates of the Conservatory, involving a residency, master classes, and a collaboration with BluePrint’s artistic director and conductor, Nicole Paiement.
A Wine Appetizer
The concert began with an eight-minute work for three tympanis, nicely played by Douglas Chin. UC Santa Cruz Music Professor Hi Kyung Kim composed Secret Wine based on the Korean sanjo form, which is characterized, in part, by progressive rhythmic acceleration over the course of a composition’s duration. There was no alcohol in the music. Instead, the title is inspired by the reddish color scheme of another professor’s home studio, which might even be a more appropriate venue for the music (some of Chin’s delicate resonances sounded lost in the relative vastness of Hume Hall).
The first half of the concert concluded with Luciano Berio’s 1964 settings of American, Armenian, French, Sicilian, Italian, Sardinian, and Azerbaijanian folk songs for soprano, accompanied by violin, cello, harp, clarinet, oboe, and percussion. Lauren Agosta was the soloist — stunning in her wraparound pink garment, confident in gesture and delivery, accurate in intonation. At times, her warbling vibrato created strange resonances, making “A la femminisca” sound more Chinese than Sicilian, but on the whole she brought memorable artistry to Berio’s inventive and somewhat threadbare take on these varied tunes. I must say, however, that Berio should have stayed away from the two Auvergne songs so much more lushly and famously set by Joseph Canteloube in 1927, “Lo fiolaire” and “Malurous qu’o uno fenno.”
On this outing, BluePrint was kind enough to provide texts and translations of the songs (an improvement over the textless Paul Bowles songs in its Feb. 5 concert), but it would have been nice had the house lights been set high enough to read them. I was disappointed, also, not to see a transcription of the Azerbaijan “Love Song,” even though the proffered handout stated: “Transcription defies translation.” Wikipedia tells me the song was comparing love to a stove. In this concert, it definitely had a double burner.